Welding systems reside at the core of the modem industrial age. From massive automobile assembly operations to automated manufacturing environments, these systems facilitate joining in ever more complicated manufacturing operations. One such example of a welding system includes an electric arc welding system. This may involve movement of a consumable electrode, for example, toward a work piece while current is passed through the electrode and across an arc developed between the electrode and the work piece. The electrode may be a non-consumable or consumable type, wherein portions of the electrode may be melted and deposited on the work piece. Often, hundreds or perhaps thousands of welders are employed to drive multiple aspects of a construction process, wherein sophisticated controllers enable individual welders to operate within relevant portions of the process.
For example, some of these aspects relate to control of power and waveforms supplied to the electrode, movements or travel of a welding tip during welding, electrode travel to other welding points, gas control to protect a molten weld pool from oxidation at elevated temperatures and provide ionized plasma for an arc, and other aspects such as arc stability to control the quality of the weld. To enable precise control of a welding process (such as one of the welding processes above), various sensors are often employed to provide data relating to one or more aspects of the process. For instance, data relating to heat of a weld, moisture in a region subject to welding, contact sensors, and the like can all provide data that is utilized to control and/or monitor a welding process. These sensors need to be configured to enable obtainment of data therefrom.
Configuring disparate welding units with particular sensors, however, can be quite challenging, as sensors are often manufactured by different vendor(s) than vendor(s) that manufacture the welding units. A conventional solution to this configuration issue is to hard-wire desirable sensors to a welding unit, microprocessor and/or microcontroller associated with a welding unit. For example, a welding unit can be purchased for a particular application, and sensor(s) can be hardwired at a time of sale to render the welding unit suitable for such application. Applications associated with welding units, however, can be frequently subject to change, thereby rendering the sensor configuration ill-suited for a new application. Furthermore, it can be later determined that disparate sensors are useful for diagnostic purposes with respect to a welding unit or process, as well as monitoring quality of welds undertaken by such welding unit. In conventional welding systems, if a disparate sensor is needed, a technician must be employed to hardwire such sensor to a welder. Accordingly, dedicated ports may need to be added to the welder and/or a computer related thereto to enable utilization of the new sensor. Furthermore, the computer must then be configured to analyze data output by the sensor in order to employ such data in a useful manner. Such configuration is costly, as the welding system can be disabled for an extended period of time, thus adversely affecting manufacturing throughput. Moreover, a skilled technician is required to effectuate any alterations made to sensors associated with a welding system, thereby increasing monetary costs.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for a system and/or methodology for dynamically adding, removing, and/or configuring sensors with a welding system.